Black History Month

Begun in 1926 by Black scholar and historian Carter G. Woodson, Black History Month was originally celebrated as a weeklong event. In 1976, Congress expanded the observance to the entire month of February. The month of February was chosen to coincide with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln.

To help you integrate African-American culture and history into your curriculum, we offer a selection of resources, activities and lesson plans that cover a variety of grade levels.

Lesson Plans

Musical HarlemStudents in grades K-4 listen to jazz audio clips to learn to identify styles and musicians associated with the Harlem Renaissance.

African American Scientists and Inventors Students in grades K-12 learn about and celebrate the contributions of African American scientists using a link from this page to The Faces of Science: African Americans in the Sciences.

The Poet’s Voice: Langston Hughes and You Students in grades 6-8 investigate “voice” in Hughes’s poetry, develop their own distinctive voices in journal entries, and write an original poem or critical essay on an aspect of Hughes’s poetic voice.

The Illusion of Race Students in grades 6-8 investigate both genetic and societal consequences of the often-artificial and evolving classifications of race and ethnicity. Student and teacher materials are included.

African American English In this unit, students in grades 9-12 examine several hypotheses about the development of African American English (AAE), consider how AAE has been treated in schools, and analyze the influential role of AAE in modern culture and society.

Activities

Culture & Change: Black History in America Students in grades 3-4 can read about Rosa Parks, Melba Pattillo, and ten African American men and women and their inventions. They can view an interview with author Christopher Paul Curtis and listen to a history of jazz with Wynton Marsalis, and take a virtual journey on the Underground Railroad.

The Underground RailroadStudents make decisions as they follow Harriet Tubman and escape from a slave owner in this online interactive.

Quizzes

Notable African Americans from the 18th-century to the present In this Jeopardy-type quiz game students in grades 5-12 can choose from three levels of difficulty to test their knowledge of famous African Americans. Spelling counts, for example Billy Holiday rather than Billie Holiday would be marked incorrect.

Additional Links

American Labor Studies CenterLooks at, not only the struggle of an oppressed people, but how that struggle was part of a larger social and economic movement to improve the lives of the working class.Black Labor History